Green-fingered villagers are busy preparing for a plant sale and coffee morning.

The sale replaces an open gardens event which has been held to raise funds for eight village groups in Ingleby Arncliffe and Ingleby Cross, between Northallerton and Stokesley, every four years for the last two decades.

Organisers have called time on the open gardens event as there are too few people able to take on the work behind it.

Instead, a fundraising plant sale and coffee morning is being held on Saturday, April 29 from 11am to 2pm in Ingleby Cross Village Hall, as a joint venture between the WI and Garden Club.

The thriving WI is more than 100 years old and attracting new members as people move into the village. There will be homemade cakes, scones and savouries to eat and takeaway, plus hot and cold drinks.

The plants on sale have been grown by Garden Club members, including shrubs, perennials, wildflower plants, annuals, houseplants and edibles such as tomato plants.

Some of the plants are not available in garden centres but more usually found at specialist nurseries.

The Garden Club was begun after the first Open Gardens in 2003 and now has almost 40 members from a village population of about 300.